This afternoon I had a fascinating interview with Greg Dwall, who was born February 10, 1979, in Chico, California. Mr. Dwall is an expert in Judo, but is still learning. He has played in 3 international competitions such as the World Judo Championships in Brazil and the 2008 Olympics in Asia. During these games, Mr. Dwall became a silver and bronze metal winner. The most impressive fact that caught my eye was that Greg plays Judo against sighted opponents. He does this by developing physical strategies and just plain hard work. I asked Greg what goes through his mind when playing Judo. “Action,” he said, “Just beating my opponent,” he said simply.
Greg said that with the coaching he believes that blind athletes can be great — that’s why he wants to continue the legacy of the blind Judo wrestlers before him.
I also had a chance to explore Greg’s personal life and learn what makes a strong judo player and some strong events that helped build this man’s character. He started off by saying he grew up in a stable home, both parents, one brother and one sister; also throughout his time in school he was active in football, soccer and wrestling. His hobbies were classic rural boy ones — hunting and wrestling, a sport in which he won some awards. Greg confided in me with some irony that in his teenage years he mostly paid more attention to sports and his girlfriend and he never worried about his grades. When it was time to figure out what college and what career he wanted to do, however, he was trap, because his grades weren’t great and his mind wasn’t together. So, increasingly, he began to feel pressured by family and other peers.
When I asked him what he did to get through his hard times he said, “I got up and grab my shotgun and tried to end my life.” I was stunned at Greg’s great candor but he was comfortable explaining and I let him continue.
When He awoke a week later Greg discovered that he was missing half of his face and that he was blind. I ventured to ask what was going through his mind at that time and He was chillingly honest, ”Oh crap, what am I going to do now!”
Even in the midst of his recovery, Greg’s humor came through. While he was in the hospital he made a bet with his brother on who would win — the Packers or the Patriots. Interestingly, Greg says that he was more bothered after his accident by his injured face than with his blindness. Improving his face would require that Greg undergo multiple surgeries to restore his facial function and gain more comfort. After Greg was released from the hospital he attended college at California State University, Chico. Though he resumed his studies, further surgeries slowed him down. And in between all these demands he enrolled at a California blindness training center to gain the basics of blind independence such as Braille and cane travel.
Now that Greg Dwall is 30, he is looking toward the future, toward settling down in a stable community in Maryland, where he can keep teaching Judo and continue doing recreation jobs. His advice to other blind students thinking about sports is to “explore freely and make sure you have support from family or friends and, above all, keep working hard.”